Colophon is now Twittering!
Follow us all the way to Luxembourg – and then receive updates on talks and events during the festival. Also some early spreads from our forthcoming book are now viewable (click on the small images)

Docu recalls the love behind legendary New Orleans independent mag
I can’t imagine anything more opposite to The September Issue

Designer returns to his pet project: Diamante magazine
John describes it as “printed using letterpress, screen-print, lithography, die-cut, foil-block, a range of materials, inks and whatever I feel appropriate at the time.” He’s creating 6 issues a year, printing only 300 of each issue and selling them for (I think) £12 each. You can see some pics of the lovely-looking first edition here (PDF). A handful of subscriptions remain – email him for more information

Another online photography magazine launches
A great start, too. Following on from 1000 Words, and others, it seems that love of great photography is leading to some of the most interesting online magazines so far

Prada asks fashion editors to decorate their windows
Who’s doing product placement now?

Digimag Spektacle cryptically returns
It’s not a real suburban village, I promise. Somewhere I have their first edition from 2001, that came on a mini CD-Rom. They’re still experimenting with the strange combination of fashion and QR codes, now with iPhone reader. I can just never be bothered to take the picture and do the searching

Great magazine covers, daily
Not sure who we have to thank, but thanks (and thanks René for the heads-up)

Crisis roundup

Craft closes
Make survives. The spin-offs keep on spinning away

Guardian prints a publishers’ report card
I know things are bad, but there’s no need for those unfunny puns

A quick summary for those who haven’t been keeping up:

• JPG is/was a photography magazine created by 8020 Publishing, originally based around community submissions to their Flickr group.

• It was founded as a print-on-demand hobby magazine, and then turned professional in ways its husband-and-wife founders, Derek Powazek and Heather Champ didn’t like. The founders were given the boot; Powazek went on to help launch Magcloud and Fray.

• JPG‘s sister magazine, a short-lived travel magazine also created from online submissions called Everywhere, was suspended in August 2008. (Disclosure: I wrote for it once, by invitation – which seemed somewhat to go against the whole ‘community created’ thing to me.)

• On 1st January this year, 8020 announced that JPG was closing. The Faith issue was the last one. No irony intended, I’m sure.

• Despite its failure, some saw JPG‘s model as the only realistic future for the magazine industry; others felt it was not aspirational enough and the cover price was too high; or maybe it just didn’t get the right distribution, appeal to advertisers or do something that Flickr didn’t; in the end it just proved too expensive for its publisher, particularly in a troubled ad market

• Right now, it seems likely that the JPG brand will continue, with either photosharing website SmugMug grabbing it, somehow being resurrected by its community, or a buyer stepping in.

There seem to be three realistic paths for the magazine’s survival, if indeed that’s to happen:

1) As a bonus for paying members of a photosharing site, monetizing the existing community and getting new users away from industry leader Flickr. Hence SmugMug‘s interest. Or maybe Flickr will pre-emptively take it over to stop that happening.

2) As a supplement inside an existing photo magazine, such as Amateur Photographer. Great way to create a new readership, give members a special “3 issues free trial”, and so on.

3) Ironically, printed on demand via Powazek’s MagCloud (or similar). In this scenario, the community decides to go it alone, and a few keen young designers decide to take it on to boost their portfolio. You know, for kicks.

If either 1) or 2) come to pass, then 3) will probably happen as a spinoff anyway, as there will always be users who don’t want to pay to play.

(And just to throw a crazy 4) into the mix: how about combining 125‘s mag/agency combo with Getty’s Scoopt to create a gallery of available images for fun and profit? Ok, maybe not…)

Distribution certainly played a part in the magazine’s downfall; the high cover price probably did too, as did the advertising downturn. However, I don’t think they were the fundamental reasons for its failure.

As a way to create a magazine, it was indeed fairly revolutionary: take online content, pay little for it, and encourage a growing community to keep submitting. It tried to place amateur payment alongside professional standards and advertising, not an easy sell (and part of the reason for Powazek’s walkout) but probably the only way to make money from UGC in this kind of a magazine format – ignore the whingers, and skim off the willing cream. The whole thing took advantage of available online community features, and did a decent job of community management too. All fine and good, but the stumbling block was the magazine itself.

For something built around community, what it didn’t do was carry that group-hug, interactive feeling into the magazine. Reading the magazine didn’t feel like being a part of any community. The attitude of the magazine didn’t make you smile, the photo mix was fine but rarely jaw-dropping, the amateur snappers’ advice was all fine and good, but not illustrated in an effective manner. Overall, it felt… average. On a good day.

I really wanted to like it, given its courageous and interesting publishing model. I did enjoy some of its themes – Noir, above, for instance remains my favourite feature of those I’ve seen – but when I saw the result, I didn’t really understand why anyone would buy it when it was available online for free (though the giveaways stopped after issue 15); I also didn’t think the paper version ever really looked coffee table enough to justify the high price, or indeed any price at all, and it didn’t have any compelling reason to own it, unless my own pictures were inside – in which case I’d get a free copy anyway. Having a community of 197,000 users is one thing, but that doesn’t mean they’ll overlook the quality of a bland end product when faced with a newsstand (not to mention an internet) filled with other options.

The SaveJPG.com community may be crying out for a saviour, but 8020 almost certainly couldn’t have raised the necessary cash from that same community in the way that, say, Bitch did. Because the community would just say, why don’t we just keep the money and do it ourselves? (They might yet do that, and go back to making their own niche print-on-demand hobby mag – which is how the whole thing started.)

Overall, 8020′s model was a brave stab at monetising and creating a print magazine using some of the features of this brave new world of UGC. Everyone wanted a piece of that just a few years ago. The magazine even sourced some decent photos among its content, and seemed to attract a few big name advertisers.

But if 8020 was going to handbuild a brand new publishing model, then they needed to create a truly remarkable magazine to show it off, alongside some clever marketing and clear advertising appeal. ‘Not bad’ was never going to be good enough to change an industry.

And so it wasn’t. I remain doubtful that most forms of UGC will ever be monetised far beyond subscription fees; it certainly won’t until/unless the advertising millions find a way of making money off communities, something MySpace, Google and Facebook are still headscratching over. One thing’s for sure: it’ll take a better magazine than JPG to prove me wrong.

Time Inc’s latest wheeze to revitalise the magazine industry launches in a few weeks. MagHound takes the NetFlix subscriber model (LoveFilm for you Britishers) and applies it to magazines: any titles you want for a fixed fee. It’s a bold idea, but there’s a few crucial details yet to be confirmed that will make the difference between it being the Messiah or just a very naughty boy.

Here’s the form letter that Aimee at Time Inc sent to me in response to a few casual queries:

Many thanks for your interest in MAGHOUND, a new online membership service that allows magazine lovers to choose up to fifteen magazine titles- and get them delivered to their home- for one low monthly fee. MAGHOUND members are able to add or change magazine titles whenever they wish, with no long-term commitment or obligation.

A MAGHOUND membership is priced by tier- three titles for $4.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more. Titles that are more expensive to publish are considered “premium” titles and will have a small additional fee per month. First-time MAGHOUND users are eligible to receive a free one month trial.

MAGHOUND looks forward to a successful September 2008 debut. By launch, the service will carry approximately 250 diverse magazine titles offered by several major publishers. MAGHOUND is always looking for new additions, so if you have a publisher or title in mind, please let us know at maghound@customersvc.com

MAGHOUND is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Time Inc, the publishers of Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

So let’s break that down. Three titles for $5 is a decent enough price, I suppose – cheaper than the newsstand, not quite as cheap as some of the deals you can get as a subscriber in the US. But that’s ok, you’re paying for the convenience of being able to swap your faves. It’s the rest of the detail that seems a little hazy.

The phrase “Premium titles” brings down the fog of doubt immediately, lit only by a 30-feet tall flashing neon question: what is premium? Close by are the shining followups: Is it “anything you’ve ever heard of”, or just the really big stuff? How much is “a small additional fee”? And will this make the whole thing unnecessarily complicated from day one?

The rest of the questions break down into three categories:

The functional

What are the monthly cycles on this? Do I have to get all my magazines in one parcel (doubtlful, if publishers are sending them out themselves), or do I have 3 “credits” to use per month?

What’s the delay between choosing a title and getting it?

When do I have to choose? Can I see a great mag on the newsstand, and then select it on my MagHound account? Or do I have to put my order in the previous month, going on brand / pre-issue hype alone?

Will I get an inordinate amount of crap in the mail for signing up? (Answer: almost certainly. Magazine choices are demographic gold mines)

The structural

Are Time Inc the best people to do this, rather than say the Magazine Publishers of America or even Comag?

What’s the financial split for the mags in question, and how much will Time Inc charge them to be on the homepage / send out special “Look out for this month’s XXXXX” emails to all subscribers (surely the cornerstone of their business model)?

The crux of the matter

Will people want to consume/buy magazines in this way?

Consumers are essentially split into two basic groups: regular readers and casual readers. Regular readers will usually subscribe to their favourite magazines, especially in the USA, though will probably also be casual readers of other titles. Casual readers will glance over what’s available and decide on the spur of the moment. How will they do this? Assuming their train/plane isn’t about to leave, they probably pick the magazine up, flick through it, stop at certain articles. If the lucky publication succeeds in keeping their attention for more than 30 seconds, chances are that they’ll take it to the cashier. (Or, if you’re unlucky, they’ll just stand there and read until they’re done). The vast majority of newsstand consumers will buy magazines for instant gratification – for reading on the train, while eating dinner, at the hairdressers and so on. It’s a functional, cheap thrill.

MagHound seems determined to create a new kind of reader, the casual multiple subscriber. This is a person who doesn’t need that instant gratification and yet doesn’t want to commit to a single title for long. Neither one nor other, it assumes a magazine-title literacy that most people won’t have, without having a commitment to any particular brands. It’s a strange hybrid that doesn’t really have a place in the current consumption model; as a system, it really only seems to make sense, as the Freakonomics blog points out, as a way of handling your subscriptions that already exist.

The Netflix model works because they’re films. You don’t own them, you mail them back when you’re done, and you don’t mind the expectation of waiting for another to arrive (just as we do for upcoming films in the cinema). Whether an instant-hit medium like newsstand magazines will work the same way is, to say the least, unproven. Still, I’ll be signing up, and will let you know next month how the hound hunts.

More worthwhile reading about MagHound over at:

Portfolio.com
Corante.com
Forbes.com

A new magazine-based file-sharing website called Mygazines has just launched, flagrantly breaking publishers’ copyright from around the world. Is it a threat, an opportunity or both?

Let’s step back a moment. When Amazon released the Kindle, most people focused on the experience of using physical object, saying how they did or didn’t want to read a book on it, how it was or wasn’t the same as paper, and so on.

What most people overlooked, however, was that Amazon was testing something else at the same time, something probably even more important than being an early seller of commercial e-paper: they were testing a sales model for digital publishing.

The music industry was painfully caught out by the arrival of MP3 players and iPods; by the time Lord Steve of Jobs had finally persuaded most big record labels not to shun digital, millions of their former customers had already turned to illegal file-sharing and copying as the only way to make their music digitally compatible. And hey, once you’ve gone free, why go back?

The music, film and TV industries have already had to change their business strategies to cope with file sharers. And now it’s the turn of books and magazines.

Publishers have apparently been consulting their lawyers over Mygazines, a website dedicated to a community that shares scans of their favourite mags. The site is pretty easy to use, is mostly filled with not-very-good scans, and is a little cryptically located – apparently owned by a Mr John Smith, its address is a PO Box in the Bahamas.

In its launch press release, Mygazines describes sharing magazines via its website as nothing more than picking up mags in “a doctors’ office, law firm, libraries, and hair salons”. It also claims that this is also more environmentally friendly than print, that it eliminates the unfair advantages of conglomerates, and allows users only to see the content “that is of interest to them”.

The press release ends by saying “www.mygazines.com has full intentions to work with the industry, with the aim of fortifying the future of all those either directly or indirectly supported by the production, sales and distribution of magazines.”

Much of that feels disingenuous. Even Napster didn’t claim that sharing music online was just the same as someone driving past you with their radio on. No trees are saved by scanning in a magazine that’s already been printed. There are big problems with the mechanics of physical magazine distribution, but scanning magazines and putting them online won’t change the domination of the big boys – if anything, it’ll consolidate it. And as for “only content that interests users” – like a Tivo to a TV channel, there goes the advertising model. That’s the real reason for publishers to reach for the red legal telephone (after all, giving away magazines for free has never been a problem in the States, as long as the ads are in place).

Mygazines’ intentions to “work with the industry” could be read in one of several different ways. Perhaps it intends a profit-share on ads on the site. Perhaps it will offer branded “channels” like YouTube. Maybe it’s hoping to be taken over by a big publisher. Or it could be hedging its bets between all that and more, building the tech with no clear business model in mind beyond knowing that there’s money in magazines, and hoping that its share will come in from somewhere.

Whether or not the lawyers will shut down this particular Caribbean venture isn’t yet clear. In fact it doesn’t really matter. The situation right now is

a) people generally don’t want to read full magazines online, (though they might read a particular article if it isn’t New Yorker length)

b) with technology, that will change

Reliable, high quality e-paper isn’t here yet, but it’s on its way. What will this mean? Perhaps an increase in product placement – scanning in articles won’t harm that. Maybe, just maybe it’ll also mean that some of the naysayers in the magazine industry will adopt a digital strategy. Compared to newspapers, the vast majority of big magazines are currently being shown up as hopelessly inept at archiving content online, at using digital formats, at providing advertisers with digital solutions or in expanding their brands online. This is an industry wake-up call, and the lawyers won’t save you for long. Either you make your print magazines so special that no kind of e-paper can replace the physical sensation of reading them – or you try to adapt, and quickly, to the digital age before Colour Kindle 3.0 is unleashed. Mygazines is a warning, and not before time.

As for the low quality of scans on Mygazines, as this kind of thing gets bigger, don’t think that your own staff won’t start uploading PDFs to the site before your mag goes to print, possibly for a share of the online ad profits. The time to start embedding your PDFs with invisible digital watermarks is now…

Oh and publishing lawyers: when you’ve finished with Mygazines, you might want to have a go at these:

Books4Share, Magazine Share, E-book Magazine Download, Dleex, and, of course, a thousand and more magazine bittorrents.

Is that the sound of the tide coming in?

(For more, read the discussion at Mashable)

Photo by Telstar Logistics. Available through a by-nc Creative Commons licence

Since they told us the web had been upgraded to 2.0, the media buzzphrase has been “User-Generated Content”.

It is, apparently, both the saviour and the death of mainstream media. Actually, it’s a meaningless phrase, a catch-all applied to very different and often contradictory ideas – most of them not new at all.

Here’s a breakdown of what people actually mean by UGC in magazines.


1. User-generated correspondence

Before the phrase existed, UGC was limited to probably the most popular section of most magazines: the problem page (which, according to an academic paper on problem pages in men’s magazines, has existed since people invited discussion in The Athenian Gazette, in the 17th century; more information in this discussion of “virtual communities in the history of women’s magazines”). There’s also its less-interesting brother, the letters page, and of course, its completely unedited second cousin, the classifieds. They can all be fascinating reads in their way. (I’ve also seen all of them faked in various publications, to cover a lack of genuine responses/to stir up a bit of fun.)

It’s a particular space where readers have a very limited and highly directed interaction with the editorial team, and with each other – albeit one with a decent amount of freedom to say what they like (whether it gets printed is another matter).

2. User-generated responses

This is usually what publishers mean when they talk about User-Generated Content – when the magazine invites specific knowledge on a particular theme. Traditionally, this has been a cry from the writer to the reader, to help participate either in the research of a piece, or to be featured within it – “We’re doing an article on bellybutton fluff, send us your stories and pictures!”. More recently, however, the shout has come directly from the editors.

American magazine Budget Travel has just published an entirely “User-Generated Content” special mostly along the lines of “Review three Chicago guidebooks” and “Send us your reasons to love New York City”. And, amusingly, “Readers answer our travel questions” – where staffers then went and carried out the readers’ recommendations. (The editor talks about creating this special issue here.)

If, as Budget Travel and Marmalade did, you dedicate your entire magazine to such pieces, then the magazine can still be flatplanned, with the topics carefully chosen by the editorial team in order to ensure a decent mix of content. The difference is in the commissioning – rather than choose one journalist, you’re offering an open pitch to anyone who hears about it.

This only works if you have a decent-sized, active, engaged and interested readership. You also need to be very careful in how you ask the questions – just as when commissioning journalists, the brief should be specific enough to focus thinking, while broad enough to fit unexpected angles. If the readership don’t respond in sufficient numbers or quality, journalists and staffers will probably be invited to contribute incognito.

This approach can be significantly cheaper than hiring professional journalists and photographers, as dedicated readers may be content with recognition in their favourite magazine – though be prepared for a backlash if payment never occurs.

3. Not-your-user-generated content

With so much media swilling around, there’s a greater need than ever for content. And fortunately, the internet is full of it. In other words, the net has become a huge image library / catalogue of stories, and magazine brands like Nuts and Monkey are keen to make the most of the opportunity. Works best for either “personal story” magazines or those that focus on extreme accidents/sports/breasts. So, magazines that already feature what 90% of the internet is anyway.

There aren’t many people left in the media who think “if it’s on the internet, it’s free”. However, if it’s on the internet, it may be available. Yahoo offers a search option for Creative Commons-licenced content only; online magazines can embed your YouTube videos without breaking the terms of use. And even if it isn’t available by licence, you can always ask.

4. User-generated content

Hype it all you like, but it isn’t new – magazines call it “unsolicited content”, and have received prepackaged words and images from readers since print immemorial. What’s new is the idea to *ask* for it. Mostly this hadn’t happened before because what came in was either unutterably awful, or would have been a thousand times better if they’d just sent in the idea, and allowed themselves to be guided by a commissioning editor.

Enter the unedited badlands of the internet, page upon page of images, texts and videos all created by “users”. If you create a space within your own branded website where people to upload whatever they like – tips, stories, photos – and you have a decent number of people posting decent stuff, then maybe you can cherry-pick the best to include in your magazine (via some carefully worded T&Cs).

This is the publishing model for 8020 Publishing, who publish the photography magazine JPG and the travel magazine Everywhere, with content entirely provided by the magazines’ own communities. 8020 then pays $100 plus a year’s subscription for anything they use in print. Other variations include gifting points in return for popular content.

It’s a model with great potential and bigger pitfalls. There are some (slightly vague) suggestions on how to create a community of readers here, whereas the founders of JPG quit last year over a disagreement about the community, the content and the company. You can read some of the founder’s comments here.

8020 also adopts another UGC model, which is….

5. User-influenced content

The internet encourages two concepts that are of particular interest to publishers: metrics and conversation. You can never be sure exactly how many people have read a feature in your magazine, but you can know how many click the webpage, where they are, how long they stay, and where they go next. And people don’t vote to decide if a magazine article should stay or go (except the fanatical letter writers, who are usually fairly insane), but in one click they can point a thumb up or down, and leave a comment. If you’re very lucky, circularity will ensue, and conversation will lead to popularity will lead to more conversation.

What this also means is that you use your community as guinea pigs, with the features getting the most attention ‘voted’ into the magazine. TV channel Current uses this model; the Guardian‘s Comment is Free is set up under similar principles, with occasional pieces spinning off into the print edition (and vice versa). As with JPG and Everywhere, the community tells the editors what’s worth looking at. The editors then choose what goes in, based in part on the wisdom of crowds.

There’s a danger with this, which is that you’re revealing your best content to your most dedicated fan base, for free. Why should they then bother to buy the print magazine?

6. User-generated editing

Make your own damn magazine. Doubtless to be paid for with contextual advertising. With the eventual conclusion being…

7. Computer-generated editing

The Daily Me was an idea coined in 1995 by Nicholas Negroponte. Essentially, algorithms do the thinking so editors don’t have to, tailored to your own unique tastes. Kind of like an RSS feed on paper, but with stuff you would have subscribed to if only you’d known about it. The first half-decent attempt to make this happen was Idiomag, generating content from what you have on your Myspace/LastFM profile. But it still feels computer generated, and a particularly dim computer at that.

Key points

• User-Generated Content means a lot of things. Often it means a combination of the above. Choose carefully.

• None of the above is a cheap or easy solution to get through the recession with your finances intact. Community building is difficult and can be expensive; maintaining it is vital if it’s going to do what you hope it will. Otherwise you’ll end up with small amounts of content in return for a half-hearted, expensive investment.

• If you let people say anything, they may not say what you like.

• Taking content for free via hidden T&Cs rather than a formal contract and hard cash may turn your crowds into mobs.

• Crowds will soon make their own magazines, and start to get interest from your advertisers. Try to harness the creativity that brings to the industry, rather than fear it. (That’s a whole other blogpost.)

• Magazines have always welcomed high-quality contributions from unsolicited sources, albeit following a certain format (ideas not finished articles). However, most people don’t seem to know that – so opening up even a tiny corner to “the readers” seems revolutionary, even though pretty much all the people working for a magazine will have started out as readers.

• The role of the editor in creating a nuanced, surprising, entertaining publication is safe (until InDesign 4′s sentient plugin).

• The age of ubiquitous big budgets, huge photoshoots, and sending Hunter S Thompson away for six months with a gold card and a drug dealer in return for 13,000 words, is over. But then we knew that already.

• If you want to make money from your readers, there’s a secret you should know: the value of UGC isn’t in the content. However great a reader’s snaps or writing are, and however much you might be saving on commission fees, it’s all irrelevant. The money comes from the other thing a properly set-up UGC strategy can provide: a precisely measured, demographically accurate, loyal community around your brand, all plump and ready to be advertised at and sold to. And that’s the key.

Get them organised, print what they do, keep them happy and survey the hell out of them. Then contextualise everything that they say through the ad spaces on your page. The reason why UGC is popular among those in the know isn’t the UGC itself at all – it’s the UGD that it spawns. User-Generated Demographics. And then you’re laughing.